A big THANK YOU goes to our friends at EVGA for hooking us up with a couple of hardware items to give away for our podcast listeners and viewers this week. First, if you watch tonight's LIVE recording of Podcast #311 (10pm ET / 7pm PT at http://pcper.com/live) you'll be able to win an EVGA Torq X10 mouse! (See our review of the mouse here.)

For everyone that can't make the live version of the show, you'll have a week to enter to win an EVGA Hadron Air Mini ITX Case! (See our review of the case here.)

How do you enter? Well, on the live stream contest for the Torq X10, just watch the live stream and you'll know exactly what to do. For the Hadron Air case though, just fill out the form on this news post (form will be enabled AFTER tonight's recording) and you'll be entered. I will announce the winner during next week's episode of the PC Perspective Podcast!

We'll draw a random winner next week, anyone can enter from anywhere in the world - we'll cover the shipping. Good luck, and once again, thanks goes out to EVGA for supplying the prizes!

Congrats to our winner: Pierce H.! Check back soon for more contests and giveaways at PC Perspective!!

In these good old United States of America, April 15th is a trying day. Circled on most of our calendars is the final deadline for paying up your bounty to Uncle Sam so we can continue to have things like freeway systems and universal Internet access.

But EVGA is here for us! Courtesy of our long time sponsor you can win a post-Tax Day prize pack that includes both an EVGA Hadron Air mini-ITX chassis (reviewed by us here) as well as an EVGA GeForce GTX 750 graphics card.

With these components under your belt you are well down the road to PC gaming bliss, upgrading your existing PC or starting a new one in a form factor you might not have otherwise imagined.

Competing for these prizes is simple and open to anyone in the world, even if you don't suffer the same April 15th fear that we do. (I'm sure you have your own worries...)

Fill out the form at the bottom of this post to give us your name and email address, in addition to the reasons you love April 15th! (Seriously, we need some good ideas for next year to keep our heads up!) Also, this does not mean you should leave a standard comment on the post to enter, though you are welcome to do that too.

Wait patiently for April 30th when we will draw and update this news post with the winners name and tax documentation! (Okay, probably not that last part.)

A huge thanks goes out to friends and supporters at EVGA for providing us with the hardware to hand out to you all. If it weren't for sponsors like this PC Perspective just couldn't happen, so be sure to give them some thanks when you see them around the In-tar-webs!!

EVGA Enters the Chassis Market

Cases are a funny thing. Some people spend more time fretting over the chassis of their new system than any other component while some builders simply could not care less about what "box" is holding the carefully selected components that power their gaming rig. While I can see both points of view, I think it is a shame to completely ignore the "look" of your system as it will be the one part of your design choices that you'll see on a daily basis.

EVGA has a great reputation in the enthusiast market thanks to its top of the line graphics cards and the emphasis of the company on enthusiast level products, water cooling and more. In recent years EVGA has branched into motherboards (again), power supplies and now cases. But rather than target a market that was saturated and dominated by a few big players, they decided to target the Mini ITX form factor. Having just recently released the Z87 Stinger Mini ITX motherboard, EVGA has created an ecosystem that allows a builder to use exclusively EVGA components with the new Hadron Air case.

In our video review below you'll see our overview of the design, the positive and negatives of the design and of small cases in general and my final thoughts on this rather impressive mITX design. After you are done watching it head down to the collection of photos below for a written analysis of the Hadron Air.

If you have never worked in a small form factor PC before, let me warn you up front - this is not as simple of a process as building a computer in a standard ATX case. Space is tight and doing simple things like routing cables from the motherboard to the hard drive can be a 10 minute ordeal. Additionally, sometimes the ORDER of installation can make a HUGE difference in the ease of the entire process so pay attention to other users that might have used your particular chassis.

Don't let its small size fool you though, the EVGA Hadron Air can pack a lot of punch. Using the latest mITX motherboard and graphics cards from EVGA's lineup you can literally build one of the most powerful gaming systems around in its small 6x12x12-in space!

EVGA has launched a new barebones Mini ITX case called the Hadron Air. The new case is in the same vein as the MiniBox chassis it showed off at Computex earlier this year. The new Hadron Air measures 12" x 6.6" x 12.1" (HxWxD) and is constructed of aluminum with a black brushed finish on the outside.

The Hadron Air has curved edges and rounded corners. The front of the case is lifted up slightly by case feet, putting the case at a slight angle. There are vents on the top and right side of the case as well as an acrylic window on the left side panel. A bay for a slim slot loading optical drive and the front IO port are located on the right side of the case. The front IO includes two USB 3.0 ports and two HD audio jacks. The back of the case has a bottom mounted power supply, two PCI slots, and two water cooling passthrough grommets.

EVGA is bundling the case with a small form factor 500W power supply. The PSU is 80 PLUS Gold rated and offers up 40A on the 12V rail. The case supports Mini ITX motherboards, two 2.5" or 3.5" storage drives, and dual slot graphics cards up to 267mm in length. As far as cooling, the case supports two 120mm exhaust fans in the top panel and the power supply has its own small intake fan. A list of compatible CPU coolers can be found here.

The case comes bundled with a 500W power supply, manual, AC power cord, two SATA cables, and a bracket for a slim slot loading optical drive.

The Hadron Air is available now for $189.99. The Mini ITX chassis is part of the Hadron series of cases which includes the Air and a water cooling optimized version called the Hadron Hydro which is reportedly "coming soon."